Today was the day of the 'tour de force'. This is when myself and another local birder of such vast knowledge it is untrue, explore the entire patch south of Wisley Airfield. Every blade of grass is covered. The area south of Wisley Airfield is jam-packed with birds. It is possibly the best area in Surrey for some species. However, due to the sensitivity and size of it we try to avoid it as much as possible. Furthermore, it is private land that we are only allowed access to ten or so times a year. Last year o the equivalent, we enjoyed Woodlark, Barn Owl, Hawfinch, and Firecrest.
We set off very early in the hope of finding a recently discovered and incredibly rare denizen of Hookwoods. As far as I know, WALBOC has the last two left in Surrey. We had been given a tip off by the finder (the local gamekeeper) and scoured the area to no avail. We scanned the leaf litter and looked under Rhododendron bushes for some time before our searching paid off and we were rewarded with outstanding views of an absolutely stunning male Lady Amherst's Pheasant. Superb. I was able to get some decent footage of the bird but I have no clue how to upload it to this blog (if you know please e-mail me). Now obviously this is quite a contentious bird and there will be some debate as to whether it is countable or not. From the information I have been given and having seen the bird in action etc. I have decided to count it although others may disagree. It seems to have come from a self-supporting population (none have been bred by the gamekeeper) and it is fully-winged etc. What a stunning, stunningbird. Exceptionally rare and I urge any readers NOT to go out and look for it as it is deep in private land. Thanks.
Satisfied by this stunning find, we continued looking through the woods and soon found several Marsh Tit feeding busily. A yeartick and good to see that they are still thriving in the area.
We continued to a site back on the Airfield where we knew there to be big numbers of Lapwing. Sure enough there were, up to 200 of them! Very pleasingly, having scanned them back and forth a fair few times, a solitary Golden Plover gave itself up. Then another, and another until eight were counted in total. They seem to have thankfully called time on their personal vendetta against me and I can now breathe a sigh of relief at having caught up with them.
My camera was not fixed properly the first time and is back being fixed again. When it is I'll have another crack at these birds and try to get some pictures of them.
WALBOC Patchlist: 87
WALBOC Yearlist: 65
After an almighty wrestle with every bit of software anybody ever created I have finally got the footage up. Unfortunately, it is the worst footage of anything ever known to man because the only way to upload it was to compress the file from HD to SD and use the worst format possible. I will try and take a couple of stills from the original video and put them up so it is actually distinguishable as an object of some kind.
Hi Alex, once you have uploaded your footage to your PC, you can add it to your blog in the same way as images. Click on the 'Add Video' icon which is next to the 'Add Image' icon.
ReplyDeleteWhilst Lady A is a stunning bird to see (looking forward to seeing your footage), there are absolutley no records of Lady A's ever breeding in Surrey and no self-supporting population. I can't recall ever hearing of any sightings although, no doubt, escapes have occured (Ninja had a Reeve's the other week and escaped Golden Pheasant have been noted (rarely)in the Vice County). A pair of Lady A's can be bought for £25 (did you see a pair?). The British self-supporting population of Lady A's was in Bedfordshire and is, reportedly, close to extiction. However this sighting should be reported, whatever it's origin, but I wouldn't personally count it other than on the 'Escapes' list If I were you.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.preloved.co.uk/fuseaction-adverts.showadvert/index-1033441448/c72a3226.html
http://blx1.bto.org/birdfacts/results/bob3970.htm
Cheers Johnny,
ReplyDeleteProbably not worth going for on your yearlist then. I only saw the male but was told there are also two females around. Apparently its been there for some time but is just really elusive and very skittish around people.
I've added it to my patchlist but have decided not to count it on my British list - I'll just have to make a trip to Bedfordshire fairly soon
Footage coming soon...